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[Trinity-Belle]

I reported the girl who was jumping ahead for two reasons

1/ it does impact on my business if I can never get the top slot and it does give her an unfair advantage.

2/ what's good for the goose... if one girl is allowed to get away with it, then soon enough everyone will be doing it and it will become a game of who can write the cleverest script and any girl who doesn't have the technical know how to do such a thing will be permanently disadvantaged.

You can set scripts to do all kinds of things, not just update every x minutes... you can have them check the RSS feed of most recently updated profiles in your area and then update every time someone else does... it's really not hard to do for anyone with a modicum of programming ability.

I think the changes AW introduced recently were to stop anyone who updates too frequently from gaining the top slot by ceasing to modify their "last updated" time, whether they update by script or even if they do it manually. AW haven't been clear on how often is "too often" nor on how long the user will be sanctioned for... which is a good thing in my view. If people knew the "rules" then they would just modify their scripts to stay just inside of the goal posts!

I'm all for live and let live, and I'm not bothered by girls doing things they didn't ought to be doing, nor by girls seeking out ingenious ways of getting the best out of their profile, even if that means that they aren't operating strictly within the letter of the law, so to speak. I've always been a bit of a rebel at heart and I quite like the idea of bending/breaking rules and getting away with it!

BUT - if I think that someone else is gaining an unfair advantage and is, thereby, potentially affecting my business, then I will do what ever I can to change the situation either by stopping them from doing it or by beating them at their own game!

I wouldn't bother with anyone who is not a t-girl or is not in the south east or who just doesn't represent a threat to me because the offering they have is conceptually so different to mine as to mean that we are unlikely to have any client overlap.

I know that reporting a girl can potentially have a direct impact on her income, so I would want to be pretty sure of myself and I would always hope that AW would send a warning first - although sadly, in reality, they probably would not. In an ideal world AW would not just switch off girls profiles unless they were obviously fake, and anyone who seemed genuine would get a polite e-mail asking them to play fair. I've spoken with webmaster about this numerous times and their position has softened somewhat, but at the same time they are on the warpath against the organised gangs seeking to take food out of our mouths by putting up fake profiles so on the whole they prefer to shoot first and ask questions later. But they have now introduced this regime of asking girls to verify rather than just shutting them down immediately, which is a good thing in my view.

The site is too big to be properly policed by AW... they do need the users to do a bit of self policing. If we all sit back and allow everyone to do as they please and don't take action ourselves to protect our own interests, then we can't really complain when the site goes down the pan because sure as eggs is eggs, if one person gets away with it others will soon enough follow suit.

So I'm sorry if Scotty got closed down and lost some significant income over it... I know how it feels because it has happened to me too! Except I never got my old profile back, not the feedback and field reports it had, nor the views nor the history which proved me to be an established girl... no... I lost it all and started again with a new profile from zero.

I would say - if you think a girl is doing something which gives her an unfair advantage, and you think that her advantage has the potential to directly impact on your income and you are SURE what she is doing is against the rules, then sure... report her. But when you do, just remember that she may well suffer more than an annoyance... she might lose her income... it's not something to be done lightly!